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Today at work, a wise colleague told me that the Florida children demonstrating for gun control, while impressive, “will lose.” He explained, “They don’t know what they’re up against.” I predict just the opposite. They will win. And I have history backing up my position.

Great social movements, with the odds stacked against them have, and will continue to be won, by children. Adults may be too weary, or scared, or jaded to persevere. But when kids are fired up with a great cause, they can be unstoppable. Let’s look at a few notable example of how kids have changed the world when their parents thought, “They don’t know what they’re up against.”

The Birmingham Children’s Crusade

In 1963, the Civil Rights movement faced a crucial test in Birmingham, Alabama, and it was losing. Dr. King and his allies couldn’t find enough adults to make the sacrifices necessary to confront an defeat an oppressive system of racial injustice. This was the Jim Crow of the South, set up by Whites after Reconstruction as a permanent caste system designed to maintain White rule.

It was only when the children of Birmingham and the surrounding towns took up the call to “fill the jails,” often without their parents’ permission, that the world took notice and the White power structure was defeated. The Birmingham Children’s Movement resulted in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Sit-Ins

Nashville and other sit-ins of the 1960s were conducted by students who may not have been as young as the many of the Birmingham students, but were still not old enough to let seemingly overwhelming odds stop them from taking action. They faced violence and jail and kept going until their cities were desegregated.

Child Textile Workers March

On July 7, 1903, hundreds of exploited juvenile textile laborers began a 100 mile march from Philadelphia to Teddy Rosevelt’s home in New York. Their agitation helped to reform child labor laws.

No matter what the immediate result of the new children’s movement for gun sanity, the participants and all of society win when children and young adults wake up and become enthusiastically engaged citizens. The seeds they are planting in our country will bloom for a generation.

Like this:

Hi. My role models are epiphytes. You know, those plants that grow without soil. They just absorb sunlight, moisture from the air and they don’t really bother anybody. They give us oxygen. And they hurt no one.

Here’s a screenshot from my Tumblr blog. Click it if you would like to look at Punk Pictures, Political Polemics, Peaceful Protests & Pathetic Poetry:

UPDATE: After many years of blogging, Tumblr disabled my account. They sent a notice that I had violated copyright laws by posting some band pictures I found online without permission. I offered to remove all unattributed posts, but they declined. So now I can waste my time elsewhere….

The GPS monitor dug into his ankle and it hurt, all day. Thomas figured out a way to fall asleep with it, but by morning the black metal box with its flashing red and green lights had twisted around and it felt like someone had spent the night quietly sawing off his foot while he slept. I’ll get used to it. Sometime in the next 4 1/2 years of my probation I’ll stop noticing it.

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This is my 2006 report on the structural violence of institutional racism and poverty that produce an inadequate and unequal public school system in the United States. The case study is of Central High School in Providence, Rhode Island:
Central High School

Scientific Illustrations

Here are two large posters that I created that show the Citric Acid Cycle and Photosynthesis: